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Mike Huckabee And Sick Republican Colleagues

Mike Huckabee and the rest of the Republican right are simply sick individuals, who claim to operate their lives on the fundamental principles of Christianity, but who do nothing of the sort. Theirs is a religion of bigotry and hate, of violence and greed, of denial and duplicity. They are phony to the core.

[Elections 2008: Sickening Verbal Assault]

The news coming out of the National Rifle Association in Louisville, Kentucky, yesterday about former Republican presidential aspirant and Baptist minister Mike Huckabee is enough to make the stomach turn and the blood boil.

Hearing some noises in the background while he was preparing to speak, Huckabee declared: "That was Barack Obama, he just tripped off a chair…Somebody aimed a gun at him and he dove for the floor."

That comment went far beyond the pale. It was downright sick.

Republican presidential nominee John McCain and former Republican candidate Mitt Romney were also speakers at the NRA convention.

There are varied reports as to how Huckabee’s disgusting comments were received. Some claim that there was “audience laughter,” while others claimed that there “were only a few murmurs in the crowd after the remark.”

Where is the moral outrage from John McCain? From President Bush, who, yesterday during a speech in Israel, gutlessly likened Obama to Nazi appeasers in the days leading up to World War II? Where is the outrage from Romney, the Mormon conservative custodian of the Christian right? And why didn’t Huckabee immediately apologize?

The answer is simple: Mike Huckabee and the rest of the Republican right are simply sick individuals, who claim to operate their lives on the fundamental principles of Christianity, but who do nothing of the sort. Theirs is a religion of bigotry and hate, of violence and greed, of denial and duplicity. They are phony to the core.

Make no mistake about it, this wasn’t a glib mistake on Huckabee’s part. Earlier this week, conservative columnist Robert Novak reported: “One experienced, credible activist in Christian politics who would not let his name be used told me that Huckabee, in personal conversation with him, had embraced the concept that an Obama presidency might be what the American people deserve. That fits what has largely been a fringe position among evangelicals: that the pain of an Obama presidency is in keeping with the Bible's prophecy.”

There is an ugly pattern starting to emerge here. Also this week at the NRA convention in Kentucky, Republican congressman Geoff Davis likened Obama to a “snake oil salesman” and then referred to him in an overtly racist manner as a “boy.”

“I’m going to tell you something: That boy’s finger does not need to be on the button,” Davis declared. “He could not make a decision in that simulation that related to a nuclear threat to this country.” (I’m told that Davis, at least, had the decency to apologize.)

Where is the media outrage to these remarks? These are elected officials and presidential aspirants—not retiring reverends who have no role in the political process. One media account said that Huckabee’s comments “raised eyebrows.” Raised eyebrows? He should be condemned by every media outlet and every elected official in this country.

It should be clear to everyone now is why the likes of Barack Obama as President of the United States frightens Huckabee, McCain and the rest of the Republican/Christian right so. His is a calling to what Abraham Lincoln called the “higher angels of our being,” not to the debased and demonizing mentalities of the bigots and racists. Obama walks on the moral high road.

And that moral high ground sends them shivering.

While McCain and Huckabee and Romney and the Republican right pander to the gun-lobby in Louisville, gun violence begets death and destruction across America. Death by guns has increased by 13 percent during the Bush presidency. Little more than a year ago, 33 innocent victims at Virginia Tech were slaughtered by a gun-wielding assassin and some 30 more injured. Not all that far from where the NRA met in Louisville.

Approximately 30,000 American citizens are killed by guns every year.

Do these people have no sense of shame? Blood drips from their words and from their political actions. And from the money that now fills their political coffers.

It is now time to beat back this scourge upon our land come November.

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Award-winning filmmaker and journalist Geoffrey Dunn, Ph. D., is the former recipient of a both a John L. Senior Fellowship to the CornellUniversity Graduate School of Government and a National Newspaper Association Award for Investigative Journalism. His most recent film is Calypso Dreams.

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